She had helped to unpack it, and take
out their linen and clothes, when the other man--his twin-brother,
she believed he was--had gone off with the horse and cart.
Miss Pole had begun to have her suspicions at this point, and
expressed her idea that it was rather strange that the box and cart
and horse and all should have disappeared; but good Mrs Roberts
seemed to have become quite indignant at Miss Pole's implied
suggestion; in fact, Miss Pole said she was as angry as if Miss
Pole had told her that she herself was a swindler. As the best way
of convincing the ladies, she bethought her of begging them to see
the wife; and, as Miss Pole said, there was no doubting the honest,
worn, bronzed face of the woman, who at the first tender word from
Lady Glenmire, burst into tears, which she was too weak to check
until some word from the landlady made her swallow down her sobs,
in order that she might testify to the Christian kindness shown by
Mr and Mrs Roberts. Miss Pole came round with a swing to as
vehement a belief in the sorrowful tale as she had been sceptical
before; and, as a proof of this, her energy in the poor sufferer's
behalf was nothing daunted when she found out that he, and no
other, was our Signor Brunoni, to whom all Cranford had been
attributing all manner of evil this six weeks past! Yes! his wife
said his proper name was Samuel Brown--"Sam," she called him--but
to the last we preferred calling him "the Signor"; it sounded so
much better.
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